Virgin Media - access to service strips where no pavement

googler

Virgin Media are coming to our area, and want to rip up pavements to install their fibre.

In our street, we have no pavements, and one resident has been in discussion with the Virgin team, who claim there is a service strip running along the roadside within each of our properties, and that they have rights to excavate it, since they have the appropriate work permit(s) from the council.

The service strip is not marked on the ground by any different-patterned paving, edge paving, or other visual markers, and many of the home owners have built decorative features over the claimed strip, which Virgin allege they should not have done.



Question; has anyone had success in actively denying Virgin access to a service strip on their land?

stator

You need to check your deeds, download them from the land registry if you don't have a copy


If there is a service strip, it will be mentioned in the title entry and shown on the title plan.

Browntoa

How do the openreach cables pass along the Street ?

If long established houses then they must also have cabled along it

chrisw

I don't think there's any way to stop it as it's part of the adopted highway.

It's not necessarily marked on title deeds.

We had ours done years ago and to be honest they reinstated everything really well, in fact the work is invisible on gardens but shows as a black strip along footpaths and across driveways.

googler

stator wrote: »

You need to check your deeds, download them from the land registry if you don't have a copy. If there is a service strip, it will be mentioned in the title entry and shown on the title plan.

In our case, the title plan shows a dotted line parallel to boundaries passing along the front of half a dozen houses, and stopping at ours, as if that defines the strip, and an access point to our property. It's not the clearest plan on Earth, but I hope to get a clearer one, perhaps from the council.

There's no textual mention in our deeds of a service strip, but I gather others have (not got wordings yet).

In light of the above, I'm asking on behalf of all the residents, not just ourselves.

We seem to be exempt, on account of being at the end of the street, and the service strip, if I can confirm it, appears to stop at our boundary.

googler

Browntoa wrote: »

How do the openreach cables pass along the Street ?

If long established houses then they must also have cabled along it

Honestly, have no idea. Had no reason to think about it before now.

Built in 1993.

cranford

If you have no way of stopping VM then report any shoddy reinstatement to the council and failing that to your local councilor. I did this when we were cabled a few years back and the contractors came back to tidy up.
And now I am enjoying BB speeds of 530 Mbps!

Davesnave

newventure_2 said:

Is the new virgin broadband deals real?

Irrelevant to this thread.

Generally, if services need access to properties, they get it and you won't hold it up. This definitely applies to Openreach, but I'm not clear if Virgin have the same status. I had 'discussions' with an Openreach surveyor and managed to avoid having a pole stuck in my neighbour's only decent view, but he made it plain that if push came to shove, he could place it wherever he liked.

onomatopoeia99

Davesnave said:

Generally, if services need access to properties, they get it and you won't hold it up. This definitely applies to Openreach, but I'm not clear if Virgin have the same status. 

Virgin Media have code powers.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/policy/electronic-comm-code/register-of-persons-with-powers-under-the-electronic-communications-code#V

Undervalued

chrisw said:

We had ours done years ago and to be honest they reinstated everything really well, in fact the work is invisible on gardens but shows as a black strip along footpaths and across driveways.

Well you were very lucky.

When it was done here, admittedly by one of the companies that eventually became part of Virgin (NTL ??) it is difficult to imagine how a worse job could have been done.

Whilst the download speed of their broadband is excellent, I cannot think of another single good thing about this appalling company. I was a "customer" for many years but never again.